Personally I'm glad Ronnie O'Sullivan has been knocked out because it's about time the rest of the players got the recognition they deserved.

The Higgins v Cope match is turning into a classic, as is Robertson v Carter and then you've got Maguire buckling under the pressure of being "the new favourite" (even though Selby is a much better player) hence the longest ever frame, and you've got a Murphy v Hendry quarter-final, and Mark Allen finally showing what he's promised for years.

All in all the best World Championships for a long time and Ronnie O'Sullivan is out. Just goes to show that all this talk of him being the saviour and snooker not being able to (Jamie) cope without him is a load of old bollocks, just as it was with Alex Higgins all those years ago.

I personally find Mark Allen a nice change to the set order of play at the moment. The one thing I find less impressive is Ronnie's reaction afterwards when he said that Mark shouldn't be jumping for joy because "I didn't play really well".

Though that may be true over the course of the entire match, the 2nd session was one of the highest quality I've ever seen. Ronnie going 6-4 ahead with flawless play only to be pegged back by Allen in equally good breakbuilding fashion.

Still hear Steve and John commenting on that session in the interval: "you can keep up with Ronnie, but you cannot outscore or outplay him"...apparently you can and no matter how awesomely good, talented, and genius Ronnie is, he is after all beatable.